One Man's Notes on Movies and Other Life Obsessions by Chuck Wilson

June 08, 2008

You can tell the new horror flick The Strangers works a number on audiences because when people get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie, they dash out and hurry right back. And they jump at the out-of-the-shadows appearance of the death-doll white masks the villains are wearing as they terrorize a young couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, both very good) who are stuck in a remote house. Audiences talk back to the screen too, and not in a “this-movie-is-so-dumb” kind of way, but in an “I’m-freaked-out-but-let-me-pretend-to-my-friends-that-I’m-not” way. In other words, The Strangers is a perfect summer movie—derivative but fresh, artful but fun. And creepy. Damn creepy. Did I mention that? My friend and I saw the late show and on my way home after midnight I had a moment when I thought a guy in an SUV was following me—he'd rushed up on me, as if he was going to ram me (like in the movie). I changed lanes deftly, twice, and sped up, eyes to the rear-view mirror, a man on the run. Then I stopped for gas, and impulsively pulled into the drive-thru car wash, which probably wasn’t the best idea. Now, I have a vivid imagination, and when I use the drive-thru car wash, I always lock my car doors, even when the sun is shining high in the sky, because I always sit there thinking of the car wash attack scene in the 1973 cop movie, The Seven Ups, a film I actually haven’t seen in 30-odd years. Tonight my locked doors did me no good because when those giant brushes surrounded the car, and the water started pounding, insistently, against the windows, I had a moment of rising panic, and felt cornered, like poor Liv Tyler in the pantry. I laughed out loud in my car and rang my friend to have her laugh along with me but was relieved when the green 'All-clear' light came on. Hats off then, to Strangers writer-director Bryan Bertino (this is his first movie), who got me good. My car wash terror, which my body still remembers, was goofy but goosey. I got to laugh at my fears, and I think that’s what a scary movie can do—cut through our defenses, open us up, and reveal our pounding hearts. (Chuck Wilson)